


Night of the Bad Wolf

by Emma



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-06
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 03:34:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/556438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emma/pseuds/Emma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death comes for all of us in the end. Or does it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night of the Bad Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> Happy (late) Nos Calan Gaeaf!

_Lupus is a constellation that can be seen from the Southern sky of Terra. The name is Latin for wolf. Lupus was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations. One of its most interesting features is a large nebula commonly known as “the Dark Wolf” by Humans and “the Bad Wolf” by the Traveling Folk. Very odd tales are told about the Bad Wolf. The oddest one happens to be true._

  
It's a beautiful sight, isn't it? The Dark Wolf has become a lot more colorful since KeKouan went supernova. It still has the same reputation, though. Mad, bad, and dangerous, the Dark Wolf is. Some of the Traveling Folk think it’s actually sentient, or as near as can be. They call it the Bad Wolf. No, that’s not common knowledge, but I had a friend with a knack of knowing such things.

 If you don't mind my asking, why are you down here? The view's much better from the passenger observation deck. Me? I always come down here on this day. This was the last place I saw them. I feel close to them here. Sometimes I even think I can hear them laughing...

 Sorry, I suppose I should introduce myself. Name's Alonso Frame. Yes, that Alonso Frame, for my sins, which are many, what with my spending most of four decades with Jack Harkness, on and off. A good life, but a, shall I say, unorthodox one. My mother would have fallen into hysterics and fainted away if she had known what her fair-haired son got up to during those years.

 Did I love him? Yes, I did. You automatically fell in love with Jack, even when he drove you nuts. Did he love me? Yes. Jack wasn't the kind to stint on love. The thing is, what most people don’t understand, is that when you were in love with Jack you had to deal with thousands of years of ghosts and millions of years of possibilities. I was really good at it if I do say so myself.

 Yes, I’m speaking in the past tense. Jack’s not around anymore. According to the Ood, he doesn’t seem to be anywhere in the Multiverse. Seems there was only one of Jack. Once this one became a fixed point in time all the other Jacks vanished, like soap bubbles. I don’t know much about that, my maths ability extends to ship’s calculations and no further, but I do know one thing. Wherever he is, Jack’s happy.

 How do I know? Because I saw him leave.

 It happened right here. I was taking the old _Koningin Sophia_ back home for decommissioning, and Jack shows up out of the blue after six or seven years and invites himself along. I should have known he was planning something, but he looked like death on a griddle, and besides, I was happy to see him. People were always happy to see Jack, even if they knew that it would lead to a lot of running while being chased by folk with big guns and no sense of humour. Trouble magnet, Jack, like some others one could mention, but he brought so much light, so much _life_ with him that it was worth every blister and every scar.

Oh yeah. Sorry. The _Sophia’s_ final run was a kind of triumphal procession. She was the lady of the badlands, the last ramscoop carrier in service. She had carried the first three Badlands expeditions and brought everyone back safe. So we took her the long way round. She was overloaded with Very Important People, famous and not-so-famous, and part of the celebrations included the viewing, from a safe distance of course, of the explosion of the blue giant star Beta Lupi, called KeKouan by ships' crews.

 As we reached the Beta Centauri jump point, I could see Jack was getting ready for something. He _relaxed,_ you see. Jack never relaxed except after all the planning was done and he was waiting for the action. I finally cornered him right in this room and asked him what was going on. After a lot of fast dancing –  God, that man could talk the hind legs off a brace of donkeys -- he finally told me.

 He had found a way to die.

 He had spent years tracking down an obscure Fendahleen legend about a group of Time Lords that were caught in a supernova explosion. According to the story, something about the chemical composition of the core of a blue giant star can drain the artron energy from living cells, but only during the exact moment in which the star explodes. Jack went back in time and ran the numbers through the Logopolis computers and he was given a seventy one percent probability of success.

 If you know anything about Jack Harkness, you know that was more than enough.

 To this day I don't really know why I didn't argue with him. I think it was because Jack tended to pop into my life at odd intervals; years for me, millennia for him. The first time I met him Jack was a little over three hundred years old in linear time. The last time he was over fifteen thousand. He was bone tired of living, too much loss and grief.

 As days passed, Jack kept to this room for most of his waking hours. I think he was saying goodbye in his own way, recalling the friends, the lovers, even the enemies. Then the night of the KeKouan Ball he asked me to join him. It took me all of two minutes to say yes and push all my social responsibilities onto my Second.  The ship’s astrophysicist had calculated the time of the explosion to the second and we had timed the trip so that midnight ship’s time would coincide with the blow.

 I made sure to put on my formal uniform – Jack was a fool for an uniform and it amused me to indulge his kink – and came down here to find a wonderful banquet spread out on the floor on real linen tablecloths, with pillows to recline on and a holographic bonfire to light it all.

 Then I remembered. Back on Terra, it was Samhain.

 Jack had always celebrated Samhain, except he called it Nos Calan Gaeaf in the Welsh fashion. I knew why, though he had never told me: it had been Ianto Jones's favorite holiday. Typical of Jack’s life. He moved among signs and portents like you and I move through air.

 Jealous? Of course not. I told you. I knew, I know, that Jack loved me. But we were not soul-bonded. Ianto had been Jack's anwylyd enaid, his soul's beloved.  Me? No, I never did find my anwylyd enaid. I gave my soul away very early, to someone who couldn't reciprocate. Nothing to be sorry about. I had a grand life and damn few regrets. Not bad at all for a country boy who ran away to space because he was tired of looking at the back end of a mule.

 We ate and drank and made love and I helped Jack get dressed in his old RAF uniform. One last kiss and he was ready to go try his luck at dying.

 And then it happened.

 Every door into this room, down to the service hatch over in the corner, slammed shut. No matter what we tried, we couldn’t get them open. The comm links were down too. Even Jack’s wriststrap magic failed him. It was as if the ship was conspiring to keep him alive. The hopeless look in Jack’s face as he watched KeKouan explode was almost more than I could bear.

 When the light reached us the whole room lit up in golds and greens and blues. It was like living in the middle of a rainbow. Then, as the light faded, I saw a man _walk through_ that diamond plate glass right there. He was young and absolutely gorgeous in his old-fashioned three piece suit. And his eyes! Blue and ageless and wise they were, and they saw inside me as easy as I see out that glass.

 I knew who he was, of course. I had seen his image in Jack’s ship files. But even if I hadn’t I would have known by the look in Jack’s face. He stumbled forward like a sleepwalker, reaching out tentatively; scared, he was, that it was a dream or a hallucination. But he got past it when the man pulled him into a kiss. It told me a lot about them, that kiss. No wonder Jack wanted to die, if it meant being with Ianto.

 When they broke it off, Jack pressed his face into Ianto’s neck, holding on for dear life. He said something that made Ianto chuckle.

 “The blaidd drwg sent me. She has plans for you. Well, for both of us.” He kissed Jack’s temple. “You twypsyn. Did you think she would waste her greatest creation?”

 The light around us was changing, darkening towards the red end of the spectrum. They began to fade away. At the last moment Ianto looked straight at me and mouthed _thank you._ Then he said something else. _Wait._

And here I am thirty years later, still waiting. When someone came up with the bright idea of turning the _Sophia_ into a station, they asked me to take charge. It’s a good berth. I get to meet thousands of new people every year. Even the Traveling Folk have stopped by. But every year, on Nos Calan Gaeaf, I come here to look at the Wolf.

 And that’s the end of the story, Doctor. Yes, of course I knew who you were. Your face might have changed, but the Lonely God leaves traces as he passes, and I’ve known for years that you were headed this way. Jack left me his ship and that included his files. There was a lot about you in them. I figured you would want to die your last death near the Bad Wolf.  After all, Time Lords’ deaths are not the same as everyone else. According to Jack’s files, nothing is left behind, not even ashes…

 What do you mean, come with you? I’m just a mortal who’s fallen into bad company. How does a mortal…. Oh. Is that the blaidd drwg? She’s beautiful. Hey, Jack, Ianto. Nice to see you again. Yes, Doctor, I’ll go with you. The Doctor should have a Companion even now. It’s tradition.

  _Captain Alonso Frame disappeared from the Koningin Sophia Transit Station two days before he was due to leave on his well-earned retirement. Efforts at finding him failed. A band of Traveling Folk told the searchers that they had seen the Lonely God’s blue box spinning rapidly into the center of KeKouan. When consulted, the Ood simply told them that Captain Frame was exactly where he was meant to be. Soon after, the tales began._

_Very odd tales are told about the Bad Wolf. The oddest one happens to be true._

 


End file.
